Home › Fancy Dishes › Petits Choux
Petits Choux
Put in a stewpan over the fire two ounces of fine white sugar, six ounces of fresh butter, half stick of vanilla, little salt, and half a pint of water; as it begins to boil stir into it three tablespoons of sifted flour; stir it constantly until it forms a tough paste; remove from the fire and stir into it seven eggs, one at a time, mixing them well with the paste. Lay upon a buttered sheet the paste in pieces about the size of an English walnut, egg them over and dust with white sugar. Bake in a moderate oven, and when cold open the top of each and fill it with jam or marmalade. Put on the lid and serve upon a napkin.
This is plain choux paste — the same batter as cream puffs and éclairs — piped or spooned small, sugared, and filled cold with jam. One quantity in the original does not add up, so read the flour note before you start.
- The flour looks wrongThree tablespoons of flour will not thicken a half pint of liquid into the "tough paste" the recipe describes, let alone carry seven eggs. Standard choux proportions are roughly equal volumes of water and flour: about 1 cup (4 1/2 oz) flour to 1 cup water, with 4 to 5 eggs. Treat the printed figure as a typesetting error rather than a technique.
- Half a pintA US half pint is 1 cup, 8 fl oz. If you are working from an English copy of the same text, an imperial half pint is 10 fl oz — scale the butter and flour up accordingly.
- Half stick of vanillaA vanilla bean, not an extract bottle. Split half a pod, simmer it in the water and butter, then fish it out before the flour goes in. A teaspoon of extract stirred in after the pan comes off the heat is the practical substitute.
- Dry the paste properlyOnce the flour is in, keep stirring over the heat for two or three minutes until the mass pulls cleanly from the sides and leaves a film on the pan bottom. This drives off water and is what lets the paste absorb the eggs and rise.
- Eggs one at a time, and stop when it is rightLet the paste cool to warm before adding eggs or they will scramble. Add them singly and beat each in fully; stop when the paste falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon. Depending on egg size you may not need the last one.
- Oven"Moderate" is conventionally read today as about 350F, which is too gentle to get a proper lift. Start at 425F for 10 to 12 minutes to set the shells, then drop to 350F for another 15 to 20 until they are deep gold and feel light and hollow. Do not open the door during the first stage.
- Egg wash and sugarBrush with beaten egg lightly, working from the top down so the wash does not glue the base to the sheet and stop the rise. The dusting sugar will caramelise, so watch the last few minutes.
- Fill cold, serve soonSplit the tops only after the shells are completely cool, or steam will soften them. Jam-filled choux go soggy within an hour or two, so fill at the last moment.
- YieldWalnut-sized pieces from the corrected quantity give about 30 small buns.
Petits choux — little cabbages — are often said to take their name from the puffed, crumpled look of the baked shell, and the paste itself is the pâte à choux of French pastry. Its invention is traditionally credited to a line of Italian and French court pastry cooks, with Antonin Carême generally given the credit for standardising the method in the early nineteenth century; the story is repeated more often than it is documented. The paste is prized because it needs no leavening beyond its own steam and can be turned out in quantity for a tea table. The instruction to serve on a napkin is a period convention: a folded linen napkin on the dish absorbed grease and kept the pile of buns from sliding.